J. Nannoplankton Res . 27 (2), 2005 , pp.173-176 © 2005 International Nannoplankton Association173

ISSN 1210-8049 Printed by Cambridge University Press , UKBook review
Microfossils (2nd Edition)
H.A. Armstrong & M.D. Brasier (2004)
Softcover, Blackwell Publishing, 296pp., £32.99 , $69.95; ISBN 0-632-05279-1

Reviewed by Jeremy R. Young
Palaeontology Department , The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road , London , SW7 5BD, UK; j.young@nhm.ac.uk

Overview
The first book on micropalaeontology I bought, as anundergraduate, was the original, green-covered, 1980 edition of Microfossils by Martin Brasier. Since there wasalmost no micropalaeontology in the degree course I did,it must have been partly responsible for my getting into
the subject. The strength of the book was that it gave concise introductions to the palaeobiology of all the different
rnicrofossil groups and so an intriguing introduction tornicrofossil diversity. The weaknesses were the less thanauthoritative text and the indifferent illustrations - linedrawings only. But it was the only reasonably priced,
English language introduction to the subject, so it definitely filled a niche. Given this, it sold well and it is not
surprising that Blackwell's recently decided to commission a second edition. Howard Armstrong, of Durham
University, has handled the revision. This revision has
been extensive, the new book is 50% longer, the chaptershave been rearranged and the original short introductory
chapter has been replaced by longer sections on Applied
Micropalaeontology and The rise of the biosphere, and a
new chapter on scolecodonts has been added. It is not,however, a new book; for most of the groups covered, thebulk of the original text and figures have been retainedwith only light editing and addition of limited amounts of
new material. The new material includes a few micrographs and, for most groups, a more detailed review oftaxonomy, typically at family level. The main exception isthe conodont chapter, reflecting the fact that Armstrong isa conodont specialist. This chapter has been totally rewritten and reillustrated and is a good modern review of thegroup. Unfortunately, given that the original text was over
20 years old, and all the groups covered have been intensively researched over this time period, the limited revision for the other groups is not really acceptable. By comparison, Elsevier recently considered revising the substantially better (although much more expensive) Haq &Boersma(1978)
Introduction
toMarine
Micropaleontology. This project foundered when therevising authors (including Katharina von Salis) realisedthat a total rewrite would be necessary. Whether Elsevier
were justified in then reissuing the original text as a 'second edition'. when all they had done was add a stratigraphi olu • . · deb
le: but the did state on theo,-errin . The ne\Y edition ofMicrofossils falls awkwardly and unsatisfactorily between
the alternatives of a comprehensive modern revision anda simple reprint. To illustrate this, I will discuss the calcareous nannoplankton chapter in some depth.

Calcareous nannoplankton
The chapter on coccolithophores, or to give it its full title'Calcareous nannoplankton: coccolithophores and discoasters' is 12 pages long and organised into sections on:
The living coccolithophore; Coccoliths; Ecology of coccolithophores;
Coccoliths
andsedimentology;
Classification; General history of coccolithophores;
Applications of coccoliths; Further reading; and Hints forcollection and study. This is a sensible organisation and areasonable length to give a useful introduction to thegroup. Unfortunately though , the coverage is outdated,inaccurate and incomplete. As mentioned above, a comparison of the two editions shows that the text in the newedition is a mix of very lightly edited original content
from the 1980 version and some new content. The old text
is so outdated that it does not deserve to be reprinted,
whilst the new text is poorly informed and based on a very
limited review of modern literature, the main source being
Winter & Siesser (1994). The old and new are also poorly integrated, so that there are repetitions of some concepts and inconsistencies in statements on them. A few
quotes will serve to give a general idea.
"Coccolithophores are unicellular planktonic protozoa
with chrysophyte-like pigments but differ from most otherChrysophyta in having two flagella of equal length and athird whip-like organ called a haptonema" p.129, text
recycled from 1980 edition.
Coccolithophores are unicellular algae, not protozoa.
They are not included in the Chrysophyta in any modern
classifications. Mentioning the haptonema is of littlevalue if there is no explanation of how it differs from aflagellum. The most important difference between haptophyte and chrysophyte flagella is the absence ofretronemes (hairs) on haptophyte flagella , which is noteven mentioned.
"The stellate calcareous nannofossils, the discoasters,
are an extinct group that are exceedinoly usef ul in thebiosrra ioraphy 0 the Tertiary. nleir ULrOTIOill)' is based

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Young

on the number of rays and ornamentation in plan view"
p.129, new text.
Well, that is more-or-less right , but unfortunately thispair of sentences is about all there is on discoasters and,in particular, there is nothing discussing the relationshipof nannoliths, such as discoasters, to coccoliths, eventhough at least two texts in which this topic is discussed
are cited: Perch-Nielsen (1985) and Bown (1998).
"In some living genera there is also an alternation
between a motile and a non-motile planktonic or benthic
stage. The motile stage has a flexible skeleton with coccoliths embedded in a pliable cell membrane, but in thenon-motile cysts, calcification of the membrane can takeplace, thereby forming a coccosphere (Fig. I4.1)" p.129 ,text recycled from 1980 edition.
In some holococcolith-bearing phases, an outer membrane (or ' skin') occurs beyond the coccosphere, but coccoliths are never 'embedded' in a membrane.
Calcification of membranes never occurs. Cyst formation
has only been documented in Ochrosphaera and coccospheres are not cysts. Fig.l4.1 illustrates a non-calcifying
haptophyte, without a coccosphere.
"Little is known about the mechanism of formation ofcoccoliths (for a review see Piennar [sic, the correctspelling is Pienaar], in Winter & Siesser I994)" p.l31,
new text.
I suppose that sentence was bound to irritate me since
I have published several papers on the subject. However,even in 1994 the statement was contentious at best andnowadays it is simply incorrect.
"In Coccolithus pelagicus scales are first produced in theGolgi body, are extruded and then form the nucleationsites for later development of the coccolith between thecell membrane and an organic pedicle that develops
around the cell" p.l31, new text.
This is reasonably accurate, but omits the vital information that this is a description of holococcolith biomineralisation.
"Some species of coccolithophores are known to bedimorphic, for example Scyphosphaera apsteinii (Fig.
I4.3d) and Pontosphaera japonica are known to occur on
the same coccosphere as do Helicosphaera carteri and H.
wallichii" p .131, new text.
S. apsteinii and P. japonica are separate species and,whilst the body coccoliths of S. apsteinii resemble thoseof P. japonica, they are significantly different.
Coccospheres of H. carteri , including H. wallichii-likecoccoliths, have been illustrated (see Geisen et al ., 2004
for a recent clarification of this) , but this is not an example of dimorphism.
"Some living coccolithophores (e.g. Scyphosphaera, Fig.
I4 .3d) produce two layers of morphologically distinct

coccoliths (dithecatism)" p.131 , new text.
Scyphosphaera shows dimorphism but not dithecatism. Presumably the author has confused
Syracosphaera and Scyphosphaera here , but the illustration (Fig. 14.3d) is a perfectly good SEM ofScyphosphaera apsteinii, clearly showing no trace of dithecatism, so there is no excuse for this .
"Neither botanists nor palaeontologists have agreed on
how to classify coccolithophores and their relatives"
p.l36 , text recycled from 1980 edition.
I am not quite sure what this sentence is meant tomean. With the input of new data from, for example, biomineralisation and molecular genetics, our understandingof coccolithophore classification is certainly evolving but
since the classification of Jordan & Kleijne (1994), there
has been no significant difference between botanical andpalaeontological taxonomy.
"To extract them for study is relatively simple. Pulverize
about 5-50g offresh sample ... "It is quite amusing to think of anyone trying to make asmear-slide from 50g of sediment, but I suppose this may
have been a typo for milligrams . The sentence comesstraight from the Brasier (1980) text and shows the danger of reprinting outdated text without informed review.
I could continue and give numerous further examplesof seriously misleading sentences but these will suffice togive a general impression of the level of scholarship.
Some sections are reasonable, but overall the text contains
too many errors to be recommended to any potential readership.
Unfortunately, the illustrations are no better than thetext. There are not many of them, so I will briefly describe
them all.
Fig. 14.1 is a very schematic line-drawing of a non-calcifying haptophyte redrawn from Siesser (1993) and miscaptioned as a coccolithophore.
Fig. 14.2 is an array of sketchy line-drawings of coccoliths labelled with idiosyncratic terminology and somebadly
outdated
generic
identifications(e.g .
Helicopontosphaera and Cyclococcolithina) . This is
another example of content from the Brasier (1980) version being recycled without revision , and is particularly
misleading since the modern generic name Helicosphaera
is used elsewhere in the chapter.
Fig. 14.3 is a row of four SEMs of modern coccolithophores reprinted from Winter & Siesser (1994). :t~s
always nice to see images of coccolithophores, but theseare reproduced poorly and are too small. It also seems
strange to reproduce old images when much better SEMsof modern coccolithophores are readily available. Finally,
the images are cited as being reproduced with permission
from Winter & Siesser (1994) but they were all originally

Review - Microfossils

published in other journals, hence neither the editors nor
the publishers of Winter & Siesser (1994) would have theright to grant copyright use of these images.

Fig. 14.4 is a plot of water-column distribution of intact
coccoliths, broken coccoliths and 'coccolith flour'. It is
recycled from the Brasier (1980) edition and ultimatelyfrom Listisyn in Funnell & Riedel (1971) and bears little
relation to the results of sediment-trap studies carried out
over the last couple of decades. It was an interesting study
34 years ago but has no place in a modern textbook.
Fig. 14.5 is supposed to be a map of coccolith concentration in surface sediments from Mclntyre & Mclntyre in
Funnell & Riedel (1971). However, whilst there are black
dots indicating sample localities, the data on coccolithconcentration is omitted. Again this diagram has been
recycled from the Brasier (1980) edition, but evidently
someone decided to clean up the diagraJil, by removing
the data.
Fig. 14 .6 is a plot of coccolith species diversity throughtime, based on Tappan & Loeblich (1973). This is an
obsolete , crude, poor-quality dataset, recycled from
Brasier ( 1980) , and was the best available compilation in
1980. However, the only possible explanation for using itin preference to the much more reliable and detailed curveof Bown and eo-workers, versions of which have been
included in numerous publications , is complete ignoranceof the literature on nannofossils.
Figs 14.7 and 14.8 are redrawn diagrams of Pleistocene
coccolith assemblage migrations from Mclntyre et al.
(1972) and of stable isotope data from Steinmetz &Anderson (1984) , these are old but still good.
There is one piece of substantial new content in the chapter, Box 14.1, a three-page family-level taxonomic
overview of the coccolithophores. This comprises briefsummaries of 35 families, accompanied by thumbnail
sketches of coccoliths of representative genera. Thirtyfive families is too many to attempt to summarise in thisway, especially as they are simply listed in alphabeticalorder, and the descriptions are too short to explain thebasis of coccolith classification , for example,"Rhabdosphaeraceae (Lemmermann 1980) Nannofossil
with a base consisting of a varying number of cycles ofelements. A central process rises from the base." This
description could apply to numerous coccoliths notincluded in Rhabdosphaeraceae and completely fails toexplain the unique aspects of coccoliths of theRhabdosphaeraceae. Moreover, the taxonomy used israther archaic, there are numerous spelling mistakes inthis section and the quoted ranges for several of the families are wrong - e.g. Crepidolithaceae is quoted as
Palaeogene-Neogene (should be Jurassic), Eiffellithaceae
as Early Jurassic (should be Early to Late Cretaceous),

175

Heliolithaceae as Palaeogene to Recent (should bePalaeogene). Finally the diagrams are awful. They areugly, rapidly-drawn sketches which show no understanding of coccolith morphology, fail to highlight the characteristic features of the families and, in some cases, aresimply unrecognisable (the drawing of Prediscosphaera
is particularly special, resembling an ice cream cone withchocolate sprinkles).

Other chapters
As mentioned above , the conodont chapter has been totally rewritten and the scolecodont chapter is new, these areboth probably reliable. The other chapters on microfossil
groups, however, appear to be, like the coccolithophore
chapter, unreliable mixtures of recycled old content andpoorly-informed new text. I will not attempt to review
them in detail here, but I have been reliably informed thatthe chapters on foraminifera , ostracods and dinoflagellates are all dire . The introductory sections on Applied
micropalaeontology and The rise of the biosphere might
be expected to be rather better, but I was not impressed.
For example, in the Applied micropalaeontology section
there is a moderately detailed discussion of graphical correlation, but no mention of age-depth plots, which are far
more widely used . There is also reasonable discussion ofsequence stratigraphy, but almost nothing on cyclostratigraphy. The section on The rise of the biosphere is equallyunbalanced , with decent coverage of astrobiology and theCambrian explosion, but seriously inadequate discussionsof eukaryogenesis and endosymbiosis. Overall, I foundthese sections seriously inadequate and substantially inferior to many treatments of these topics readily available inother texts or on the WWW.
The book concludes with an appendix on Extraction
methods. This is essentially reprinted from the Brasier(1980) version, which was a decent summary of microfossil preparation methods, if far from authoritative. There is ,however, one extraordinary change. In Brasier (1980),
suitable care was taken to explain that some extraction
methods had significant health and safety risks. Over thepast two decades, this has become far more of an issue
and one would expect that the cautions would be mademuch more strongly. However, the reverse is the case; thewarnings have been diluted. Most notably, Brasier (1980)
took care to explain , in the spores and pollen chapter, thatwhilst professional palynology laboratories routinely used
HF extraction, this should not be carried out without proper facilities. By contrast, in the new edition this explanation has been omitted and a basic protocol for extractionof organic microfossils has been added without any specific warning of the extreme hazards involved in the useof hydrofluoric acid.

Conclusion
There is a clear need for a low-cost modern textbook on
micropalaeontology. This book aims to meet this need andis superficially attractive - indeed according to the back-

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Young

cover it is "the definitive guide to all the major microfossil groups" and "a complete guide to taxonomy, phylogeny, ecology and palaeoecology of microfossils and theirapplications". It is nothing of the sort, but rather a student-level introduction , which is flawed by slip-shod editing, outdated content, and poor illustration. It does nocredit to the authors, publishers, or our science.

References cited
Bown , P.R. 1998. Calcareous Nannofossil Biostratigraphy.
British Micropalaeontological Society Publication Series ,Chapman & Hall: 31 5pp .
Brasier, M. 1980. Microfossils. George Alien & Unwin: 193pp.
Funnel! , B .M. & Riedel, W.R. (Eds). 197 1. Th e
Micropalaeontology of Oceans. Cambridge University
Press: 828pp .
Geisen, M., Young , J.R., Probert, I. , Saez, A.G., Baumann, K.H., Bollmann, J. , Cros, L., De Vargas , C. , Medlin , L.K. &Sprengel, C. 2004. Species level variation in coccolithophores. In: H.R. Thierstein & J.R. Young (Eds).
Coccolithophores - From molecular processes to global
impact. Springer: 327-366.
Haq, B.U. & Boersma, A. (Eds). 1978. Introduction to Marine
Micropaleontology . Elsevier: 376pp.
Jordan, R.W. & Kleijne, A. 1994. A classification system for living coccolithophores. In: A. Winter & W.G. Siesser (Eds).
Coccolithophores. Cambridge University Press: 83-105 .
Mclntyre, A. , Ruddiman, W.F. & Jantzen, R. 1972. Southward
penetrations of the North Atlantic Front: fauna! and floral
evidence for large-scale surface after mass movements overthe last 225,000 years . Deep-Sea Research , 19: 61-77.
Perch-Nielsen, K. 1985. Cenozoic calcareous nannofossils. In :H .M. Bolli, J.B . Saunders & K. Perch-Nielsen (Eds).
Plankton Stratigraphy. Cambridge University Press: 427555.
Siesser, W.G. 1993. Calcareous nannoplankton . i n: J.H. Lipps(Ed.). Fossil Prokaryotes and Protists . Blackwell ScientificPublications: 169-20 1.
Steinmetz, J.C. & Anderson , T.F. 1984. The significance of isotopic and paleontologic results on Quaternary calcareous
nannofossil assemblages from Caribbean Core P6304-4 .
Marine Micropaleontology , 8: 403-424.
Tappan, H. & Loeblich , A.R. 1973. Evolution of the ocean
plankton. Earth Science Reviews, 9: 207-240.
Winter, A. & Siesser, W.G . 1994. Coccolithophores . Cambridge
University Press: 242pp .